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Guest Post: The Bridge That Screams Lucerne

One of the most enriching and beautiful contacts I have made since I first got into the travel blogosphere more intensely is my friend Aggy of DreamExploreWander. We got into talking on twitter and I think she was the first person I ever met online to become someone I consider a friend before having met them. Her beautiful travel blog is both a treat for the eyes, with its gorgeous layout and beautiful pictures, and for the travel-itching soul. Aggy’s posts tell stories of travel with such passion and verve and such a genuine sense of emotion that even if you haven’t yet come to know her, you wil certainly want to be friends with her upon reading her posts, just like I did. In order to do that, you should subscribe to her blog DreamExploreWander, like her facebook page and follow her on twitter. I am honored and happy that Aggy decided to write a guest post for me on a bridge she recently discovered in Lucerne, Switzerland.

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I love the concept of a bridge, connecting two ends. This is why I love Mariella’s mission. Ever since I discovered her enchanting blog and become good friends with her, I now unconsciously look for bridges whenever I travel. This particular bridge I want to share with you caught my attention during my recent trip to Lucerne. Kapellbrücke Bridge is the bridge people look for once they arrive in Lucerne. I honestly didn’t know much about this pretty town, when I told some friends I was coming here in the weekend, they mostly reacted by saying “You HAVE to see Kapellbrücke bridge!”. I was thinking, “what’s the big deal with this bridge anyway?!”.

Spanning across the Reuss River, which is a gorgeous river, this bridge really does attract attention. The bridge is truly one of the prettiest and the most unique I have ever seen. Made from wood and with a roof covering the whole way from one end to the other. I have seen pictures of this bridge in the spring/summer where the side of the bridge is filled with brightly-coloured flowers which intensifies its beauty. Sadly, I was there in the cold winter but nevertheless the wooden structure of the bridge awed me. It is said that it is the oldest bridge in Europe with this kind of roofed structure.

In the past, this bridge acted as a connection between the new and old city of Lucerne. In the middle of it, there is a Wasserturm or a water tower – called this way as the tower looks as if it is standing in the water of Reuss river. From the bridge you can get a peaceful view of the river.

In 1993, the bridge was caught on fire and due to its wooden architecture, it destroyed almost all parts of it. The fire also destroyed the original paintings inside the bridge. They successfully rebuilt it although evidence of the fire still exists. The paintings were also recovered, which is great as you can now still see gorgeous paintings inside the bridge. Each painting is telling a different story, so it’s always nice to take some time inside the bridge to try to understand the meaning behind each picture.

The trip to Lucerne was another solo trip for me. In this particular solo trip, I found myself to be more relaxed and confident in travelling alone, the city of Lucerne certainly helped me. I have always found rivers and lakes a peaceful place to contemplate life. As I crossed Kapellbrücke Bridge, I felt like I was inside a museum and a gallery at the same time. The beautiful paintings captivated me. I stopped for quite sometimes at the edge of the bridge to stare at the calming stream of Reuss River. With the amazing landscape and standing in a bridge which has been through so much history, I felt a strong calmness towards me.

This bridge definitely defines the city of Lucerne and it is also the first roofed-bridge I have been. The paintings, the architecture, the water tower, the calming Reuss river – combinations which make this bridge more than just an ordinary bridge and one worth to take time to absorb its beauty.

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If you have read My Mission statement, you know why I love bridges. To me they are the most universal symbol of connection, of bringing people together and overcoming anything that may seperate us. I want to present to you pictures of bridges that I really love in places that I really love on my blog every Sunday. If you have a picture of a bridge that you would like to share with my readers as a guest post, feel free to contact me!

Being Drawn to Cologne

März 26, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 18 Kommentare

It was a big deal when I turned 12 years old for two reasons. One: I was allowed to sit in the front of the car now. Not that I got to do it very often as long as my older sisters were around to steal that much desired seat from me at every option. But it did make me feel very grown up when on my 12th birthday I was sitting next to my dad in the front seat of our family car. Two: My dad had made it a rule to take each of us girls on a small trip to a destination of our choice for their 12th birthday, just he and the respective daughter. My oldest sister chose to go to Berlin with him. My middle sister went skiing. And I went with my dad to Cologne. I do not remember why I chose that city, but I have beautiful memories of it.

So when last week I was due to go to a meeting in Düsseldorf, I decided to stop by Cologne for a few hours – just to check if everything was still there, you know. When I got of the train at the main station, I was a bit taken aback by the cold. I had spent the last few days in Southern Germany where Spring had made its first careful appearance, and the icy wind in Cologne came as a bit of a shock. But the sun was shining, and upon leaving the station, the immediate view of the Cathedral erased any doubts as to whether this had been a good idea. It was majestic and elegant, humungous yet delicate. Once more I stood in awe of this magnificent building.

I didn’t enter right away though, since I had absolutely no money on me, not even a coin to lock in my luggage at the train station, so the first thing I did was stroll into town in search of an ATM which proved rather difficult to be found. But who was I to feel annoyed by that. I was in Cologne, I had time on my hands, and walking through the city was fun even with pulling a carry-on the entire time.

Although I only meandered through what seemed to be the shopping district of Cologne, I found the city to be very atmospheric right away. People around me were talking in their funny, jovial Rhineland dialect and I kept listening in on conversations because I love the sound of it. But what made this afternoon most perfect, inspite of the freezing temparatures that sent me on to Düsseldorf with a cold, was the many many street musicians in the pedestrian zone I was walking through. I had to think of Istanbul where I first had the sensation of changing spheres every few meters with a new street musician adding to the moment’s glory.

I recorded a few examples for you. There was a guy with a flute and a few small jingle rings attached to his shoe that he was pounding with rhytmically so that his playing looked like a dance. And one with steel drums right in front of the cathedral that was a lot calmer, and his tune sounded funny in its solemn gravity. My favorite by far was a Klezmer Trio. Klezmer is a music style very dear to my heart which surely is rooted in my affinity to Eastern Europe. There is so much craving and longing, so much ambition in it. I feel that Klezmer is always driving onward, striving for more, urgently pressing to the next note, the next melody. And when it gets there, it is sighing in relief, only to move on right away. It speaks to me because I find myself as a driven spirit in its melodies and rhythms.

After having enjoyed these musical encounters in the pedestrian zone of Cologne’s downtown and having finally found an ATM, I made my way back to the cathedral.

The square in front of it was lively and packed with people. I approached the front gates with their characteristically gothic arches, and as I came closer, I looked up toward the towers reaching for the skies, as though they were actually trying to connect this earthly world to its creator.

I entered the church with many many others – tourists mainly, I suppose, but I don’t think exclusively. At any rate there was still lots of German to be heard. It didn’t feel like visiting the great cathedrals in Italy that I sometimes find deprived of their spirituality due to all the tourists. I found a place where I felt like settling, and sat there for about half an hour with this perspective on the beautiful architecture of the Cologne Cathedral:

I finally got up to move over to the candle stands. I really love the tradition of lighting a candle for someone. When I was still in school, my mother always used to light a candle at home when I had an exam, all the way through my final exam in grad school. She sat it on our dining table and every time she walked by it she would think of me and cross fingers.

I have lit candles in many many churches. To me it is a beautiful manifestation of my thinking and caring about someone. Looking at the stands filled with flickering lights, I was wondering who they had been lit for. I was wondering how many candles had been lit by people for themselves and how many had been lit for someone else. I though that there was maybe a lot of desperation and anxiety behind this – candles lit for people who were ill or had lost perspective and focus. So I thought about people dear to me and lit two candles out of the pure joy of living and experiencing beauty. Lights of gratefulness to shine and impart hope. And I hope amongst the candles were others like mine.

St Paul’s Cathedral the Non-Touristy Way

März 19, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 8 Kommentare

Dieser Post basiert auf diesem deutschen Originalpost.

Sometimes the reasons that make me want to see a place are not the most rational. The reason I wanted to see Prague, for example, was a Donald Duck pocket book that had an adaption of Franz Kafka’s „The Metamorphosis“. It started by the words: „Prague – the golden city by Vltava river…“ I read it when I was 9 years old, and I imagined golden rooftops and a golden river and golden sunshine, and I heard in my head the sound of Smetana’s Vltava, a piece I had already learned to love back then, and I wanted to see this magical place more than anything. When I went there 12 years later, it was every bit as golden as I had always pictured it to be, and the music played in my head and heart all the while I was there.

I had a similar reason I had wanted to see London for a long time. Not because of Big Ben, or the London Eye, or the Houses of Parliament, or Westminster Abbey. Not because of Oliver Twist or Peter Pan. I was always just drawn to one place – St Paul’s Cathedral. And again the reason was musical: Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins and her song about the little old bird woman selling breadcrumbs to feed the birds with.

Originally I had wanted to visit a service at Westminster Abbey that morning – but there was security and a lot of people in uniforms moving about in a concerted way that struck me as rather funny and not as awe-inspiring as it maybe was supposed to. At any rate the service could only be visited if you held a ticket. Sometimes fast decisions have to be made. I ran to catch a tube, and another, running up the streets, and I reached St Paul’s having to catch my breath.

The service hadn’t started yet, but it was high time, and so my first impression of the building was very different from what I had envisioned. I had seen myself carefully approach the church and slowly take in all the details, I had pictured myself walking about, barely being able to keep myself from humming the song about the old bird woman. Instead I ran and rushed up the stairs, „To the service?“ someone asked, I nodded, had a leaflet stuck into my hand, the sound of the ringing bells in my ears, and only found it in myself to calm down when I had already crossed through half of the nave. Finally slowly, I took step upon step forward to finally reach the dome, lift my head and let my eyes wander across it. Instantaneously, tears were running down my cheeks. I never even noticed the moment when I started crying. The beauty, the sublimity of it was completely out of this world. An usher approached me and asked: „Alright?“ I stammered: „It’s so beautiful!“

I sat down in one of the benches rather shyly. I love going to church in foreign countries, because every service in a different language or of a different confession that I have seen has only made my belief stronger that faith is universal, and spirituality transgresses the ideas of different religions. In this place of such great festivity, however, I was a little uneasy at the thought of someone realizing that I was somehow different, somehow not part of this. After all I had – and, as I shamefully must admit, still have – practically no idea about the Church of England and their principles.

As soon as the service started, however, all of this went away. There was a men’s choir all dressed in frocks. Their singing was unearthly, the sounds resonated with something deep inside my soul, and the melodies stretched out into the church dome and felt eternal. They were more solemn, more mighty than I knew church music at home to be, and they seemed to dissolve barriers inside of me and allowed me to fully give in to the entire emotional range that was at my disposition.

The sermon on the other hand was a graceful combination of philosophical depths and true-to-life happiness. It was about equality, and there was one sentence that has never left me since, and that said: „We are all one in Jesus Christ, whether we are male or female, black or white, straight or gay.“ I had never heard someone speak about matters of sexual orientation equality in a church, and I was equally impressed and touched. I do not think the sentiment of that sentence only holds valid for those who believe in Jesus. Equality is a value that is rooted in humanity, not in Christianity. This phrase is just a specifically Christian way of saying something that is bigger than any specific confession.

I left the service happier than I had gone in. I think that is what I like about religious services. They keep me from becoming cynic and restore my idealism somewhat – however much religious institutions may also have the power to destroy that same idealism when I look at other actions they take every day. Is it phony of me to concentrate mainly on those parts of it that go with my own belief system? I don’t know – what harm can it do if it may help me to be a better person?

Being German and the Issue of Patriotism

März 7, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 80 Kommentare

Last week I wrote a post on cultural identity in this globalized world and in my own travel-filled life. The reactions were immediate and plentiful, and it seems that this is a subject that interests a lot of us. I am sure that this is because in travel, we always try to find ourselves. We confront ourselves with the other, the great unknown, the „cudne manowce“, as I like to call it, which is Polish for „the magical astray“. And we enjoy this because we perceive it as different only by comparison with what we are, and in this process we notice and understand our own inner workings better than before.

Along these lines, I have a few stories to tell about being German when you travel. I never noticed that I was German until I left Germany – that makes a lot of sense, because obviously most people I had known until then were German too, and this trait didn’t serve as a distinguishing attribute that would shape anyone’s individual personality. But then I went to other places. And I noticed that I was ridiculously punctual (by comparison with Mexican Americans). And well organized (by comparison with the French). And much more used to beer than vodka (by comparison with the Polish). And uptight (by comparison with Serbians). Even prude (I am SO looking at Sweden here!!). So there were moments when I felt very German, and I couldn’t believe I had never seen it before.

What I said about vodka goes for rakija as well – man, those Croatians can drink…

In becoming aware of my Germanness, I lost some of it, and that is what I wrote about last week. Other things I will most likely never get rid of, and the one thing that comes to mind fastest and that I have most been confronted with when travelling is the awareness of history and its direct link to patriotism. Let me explain with a little help of German singer-songwriter Reinhard Mey. The quotes below are translations of the lyrics to this song called Mein Land, „My Country“:

My dark country of victims and perpetrators,
I carry part of your guilt.
Country of betrayed ones and of traitors,
With you I practice humility and patience.

It all started when I was 16 and lived in Texas for a year. Kids would come up to me on the school bus and ask me questions such as: „So, are your parents Nazis?“ or „So, is Hitler still alive?“ or „So, have your family killed any Jews back then?“ Being 16 and a foreigner, I found it difficult to deal with this at first.

There was one particularly hard situation: We were talking about Auschwitz in my Sociology class. The guy behind me muttered to his friend: „What’s the big deal, it’s just a couple of people that died.“ I gasped, turned around, and gave him a huge speech after which I left the classroom in tears. Quite the drama queen, eh? But I don’t think he ever forgot it. In time, I learned that these things didn’t happen out of cruelty, but out of ignorance and I resorted to teaching people about the Third Reich instead of starting to cry.

I can’t sing to you hand to heart,
With eyes on the flag, and a word such as „pride“
won’t cross my lips even with an effort –
stupidity and pride are cut from the same cloth!

This is where patriotism comes in. I learned that while I may not identify with what happened in my country throughout history, other people will identify me with it. Whether I want it to be or not, Germany is part of me – and that includes its dark past. But with this dark past being such a dominant association with Germany, being proud of being German is something that doesn’t feel quite right. Add in the very important factor that an extremist form of patriotism is exactly what national socialism was all about, and you may understand why Germans are usually very very careful to express pride in their national identity.

I cling to you and even through your disruptions,
I am your kin in sickness and in health,
I am your child through all your contradictions,
my motherland, my fatherland, my country.

The more I have travelled, the more people I have met who never brought up the topic of collective German guilt. In fact it is often the other way around: People tell me how much they love Germany and I get all flustered and weird because it sounds strange and wonderful to me when someone has such love for the country I am from and no fear of expressing it. And then I have to explain that I am not used to that. Of course there was the soccer World Cup in 2006 that changed things for a lot of us and allowed us to wave Germany’s flag proudly for once. Things have relaxed since then, and I am happy about that. But at the same time I am not entirely sure about it. What if we forget? What if we lose awareness of the responsibility we have? What if things got out of hand?

World Cup Public Viewing, Greifswald, Germany

This was me at a public viewing for the World Cup in 2006. Over the top, you think? You should have seen some of the other people…

I have learned not to think of patriotism as an innocent emotion. I have learned that it has led to evil, and I have learned that there are no grounds to be proud of something you have no power over, such as your nationality. You can be grateful for it, happy about it, and identify with it, but as long as it is not your accomplishment, „pride“ is not the appropriate emotion to me. I think that feeling so strongly about this is very German. And it is something that I really want to hang on to.

I love Germany. But being proud to be German is something I don’t even want to feel. I would be scared that it might mean that I had forgotten my country’s past.

[EDIT JULY 2014] I recently closed comments on this post because I felt its time had come. It is important to me to stress once more that all my observations are highly subjective and personal. People in the comments have largely taken offense to the fact that I generalized a German attitude. I do think that I am not an exception in my views, but I am well aware that there are many other perspectives on the issue. In fact, patriotism is not at all problematic for many people anymore, especially for younger generations. I stand by this post and its importance because this one individual perspective I have, my very own approach to the topic, still holds valid and may grant some insights to the whole interplay of nationalism, patriotism, pride and history.

Failures and Successes – History Alive in Berlin

März 5, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 8 Kommentare

Surely you’ve noticed by now that I have a thing for history. I think countries are the same as individual people: It is easier to understand them if you know their personal past; their experiences, their baggage, their most wonderful successes and their greatest failures. Germany has a lot to offer in that department, and not only in the 20th century – although that is usually what everyone focusses on, understandably. And German history of the 20th century can’t be seen better anywhere in the country than in Berlin. Some of the places around allow you to truly understand Germany’s past – if you let them.

Standing freely between Humboldt University’s splendid main building and the German Museum of History, across from the State Opera at Unter den Linden boulevard, there is this fairly small and maybe unspectacular building.

Neue Wache (New Guard House)

In 18th century Prussia, the city castle of the Prussian kings was not at all far from here, and this was the armory. Today it is the „Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny“ – yes, that is its official name. Very long and technical, very German. Most of us just refer to it as Neue Wache (New Guard House), but the long version should begin to tell you about its function which is much more important.

There are specific memorials that commemorate the Jews killed in the Holocaust, the Roma and Sinti, and the homosexuals. There is a memorial that reminds of the burning of undesired books during the Third Reich, and there are living relics of Nazi architecture such as the Olympic Stadium or the airport in Tempelhof. Neue Wache is much less specific, and instead more inclusive. Here, we commemorate everyone who suffered from National Socialism and any form of tyranny and dictatorship before and after. We try to make amends for what this country has done and for what others have done. We include the victims and the resistance, the well-known heroes and every single footman, all countries, nations and ethnicities in our prayers, whatever that means to every single one of us. Personally I have always found this place to be deeply spiritual.

Käthe Kollwitz‘ „Mutter mit totem Sohn“ („Mother with her dead son“)

When you enter the building, it is but one big and almost empty room. In the middle there is a replica of a work by expressionist artist Käthe Kollwitz whose work I love deeply. She was considered a degenerate artist herself under the Nazis. The sculpture is called „Mother with her dead son“, and the intensity of it drives tears to my eyes whenever I go there and take a few minutes to think about what this place means. Buried here are also the remains of an unknown soldier and of an unknown concentration camp victim. The writing next to the sculpture says: „To the victims of war and tyranny“. The memorial is very plain, but it does invite you to linger and think about what it is there to remind you of. Take that moment. Calm yourself. And find in yourself the urge to make this world a place where cruelties like these will never happen again. You will go out a changed person if you allow it to happen.

And then there is a second dark chapter in recent German history – and while I feel that the history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or „Eastern Germany“, is a very complex matter that is quite usually immensely simplified, there is not much to argue about the end of this „other“ German State which began by the fall of the Berlin Wall. This event may be the greatest triumph, the most joyful moment in modern German history, and it means the world to me personally. If you’ve got time, I highly recommend a visit to te former secret police prison in Hohenschönhausen or to Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer (Memorial Berlin Wall) at Bernauer Straße. But if you want the immediate experience, if you want to touch and feel history and find a place where you could imagine what it must have been like, you should go to the East Side Gallery.

East Side Gallery Demonstration, Berlin Germany

There has recently been a fight over the East Side Gallery because investors are threatening to take parts of it down. This is the first part that construction workers moved a few days ago. I took this at the demonstration to save the East Side Gallery on Sunday, March 3, 2013.

The East Side Gallery is the longest preserved piece of the Berlin Wall. It starts between U-Bahn stations Warschauer Straße and Schlesisches Tor, line U1, right on the Friedrichshain side of Oberbaumbrücke. The wall was built in 1961 when more and more people started to leave the GDR. Only two months prior to that, the Secretary of the Socialist Party, Walter Ullbricht, had uttered the famous sentence: „Nobody has the intention of building a wall!“ The utter mockery of it…

The official state boarder at this point was actually on the Kreuzberg side of the river, meaning that the Spree river belonged to the GDR, even though the wall excluded it from Eastern Berlin territory – it was part of the so-called death strip. I read that children would sometimes drown on the Western shore because authorities weren’t allowed to help them once they had fallen into the water.

This is the former Death Strip, imagine the Wall behind you as you have this gorgeous view of Oberbaumbrücke and the Spree River.

The East Side Gallery is famous because artists from all over the world have contributed to its design. The side of it that faces Friedrichshain district holds incredible artwork that usually has immense political power, the way only street art can. I have recently noticed that it feels a lot like the Zaspa District in Gdansk, Poland with its famous murals. This is why most people come here, and it’s well worth a good look. However, I also recommend you pass through to the river side of the wall and into the death strip and think about the fact that this was no man’s land only 25 years back, that you would have been shot immediately, had you been found on this side of the wall coming from where you just now actually came from – the other side.

For many more great pictures of the East Side Gallery, I recommend this post by my friend Sarah at Wake Up Mona.

Oberbaumbrücke in Berlin, Germany

März 3, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 8 Kommentare

In honor of ITB, Berlin’s International Tourism Fair, I decided to feature posts about Berlin and Germany as a whole on the blog this week. This Bridge has been one of my favorite places in Berlin ever since I first saw it.

Oberbaumbrücke is located between the U-Bahn stations Schlesisches Tor and Warschauer Straße. When one of the post-box-colored U1-trains passes over it on a sunny day and the red brick stone and yellow wagons stand before a bright blue sky, those colors are of such intensity that the image is among the most vivid and dominant associations I have with Berlin. I have mentioned before that I love red brick stone more than anything, and Oberbaumbrücke is no exception.

When Berlin was a divided city, the river Spree marked the border at this point – the bridge connected Western Berlin Kreuzberg and Eastern Berlin Friedrichshain until 1961 when the Berlin Wall was built. Now the bridge was no longer connecting the two sides of the river, it was no longer connecting the two cities and countries. In the 1970s the so called „Kleiner Grenzverkehr“ (literally: Small Border Traffic) commenced, and pedestrians could cross again. After 1989 the bridge was renovated thoroughly and today once more connects two sides of the river that no longer belong to different states.

On the Friedrichshain side of it you will find the East Side Gallery, the longest part of the Wall that is still standing in one piece exactly where it used to stand. It is canvas for street artists today and shows some terrific artwork, largely on topics of mutual understanding between people and cultures and of overcoming the dark parts of history. Actually the East Side Gallery is in danger of being partially torn down right now, so you should go there quick before Berlin, horribly, may lose one of its most important historical landmarks. You can read more on it in this post I wrote.

Oderbrücke, Frankfurt (Oder) / Słubice, Germany / Poland

Februar 17, 2013 / bruecken_schlag / 6 Kommentare

Bridges on Sundays comes to you from a place today that brings the Bridge as my symbol of connection between cultures to quite a literal level.

This photo was taken out of the train on Oderbrücke that connects Frankfurt / Oder in Germany with Świecko (Słubice) in Poland. The river Oder has only marked a border since 1945. Before, both sides of the river were German. After World War II Germany lost its Eastern territories, namely Silesia and Eastern Prussia, to Poland, while Poland lost large parts of Galicia, the Wilna and Nowogrodek areas to the Soviet Union. This map might make it clearer. In 1949 the Odra became the official border between the newly founded German Democratic Republic and the Polish People’s Republic. The Federal Republic of Germany didn‘t recognize this border officially until 1970 when Willy Brandt was chancellor. He had brought on a political course of rapproachment with the East. It was perceived as scandalous back then. Federal Germans felt that Brandt was giving up on land that was actually theirs to re-obtain one day. Thankfully those times are largely behind us, and hardly any German wants these territories back, but resentments die hard, and there is still mistrust between Poles and Germans when it comes to this, especially in older generations.

I only visited Frankfurt and Słubice for the first time last May and walked across a different bridge then that is open for cars and pedestrians. I remember feeling elated. There was no border control. There were no fences or gates or barriers. There was, simply spoken, just free access between the two countries. I thought “Schengen”, thought “European Union”, but this meant so much more than politics. It meant bridging the gap between two countries and removing all obstacles for people to come together and work through the hardships that history has burdened them with.

2012 in pictures

Dezember 29, 2012 / bruecken_schlag / 30 Kommentare

2012 has blessed me with beautiful travel experiences. As I look back on them, I feel very lucky. I haven’t left Europe much for travelling – but going through my pictures I don’t regret that. There is so much to discover in close proximity to my home. Join me on a quick recap of the beauty I have experienced in 2012:

This was Chemnitz in Saxony in March. While everyone always claims it to be rather ugly, I was surprised at how much beauty could be found there. It is much more than just its socialist past.

Istanbul – my Place of Desire, my Sehnsucht, my love. The first words I ever wrote about it were: „Istanbul und ich, das ist die ganz große Liebe“ – Istanbul and I, that is love for life. My trip in March, the second one I took there, will be followed by many more.

Wittenberg – the city of Luther and reformation. The church tower holds writing that says: „Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott“, a famous Luther quote translating to „A mighty fortress is our God„. I went there in April on a volunteer gathering.

At the Elbe river in Hamburg on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, there’s Easter bonfires every year. An old tradition, pagan, driving out the evil spirits of winter. Something I grew up with and that always makes me feel like home. Also I love fire. And I love water. And when the flames are reflected in the river, it is divine beauty.

In Szczytno, Poland, my father was born when it was still called Ortelsburg. This is one of the famous Mazurian lakes in early August summer sun. It had a touch of eternity to it.

This is Olsztyn in Poland. I just adore red brick stone…

… and because I love it, I loved this church in Vilnius, Lithuania!!

But the Baltics had more to offer than city life. This is a castle park in Cesis in Gauja national park in Latvia, named after…

… the river Gauja!!

The Latvian capital Riga was possibly my favorite city in the Baltics. It reminds me a lot of my mother’s home town, Bremen – no wonder, since Riga was founded by monks who came from exactly that German city in the middle ages.

Riga was followed by Estonia’s Tallinn in all its medieval beauty. This is a modern site though – the Song Festival Grounds where music festivals are held and just recently before we got there the Red Hot Chili Peppers had a gig too. Imagine all of this filled with a huge choir singing folk songs… one day I will go to the Tallinn Song Festival. High on my bucket list!

On my birthday we went to see the Estonian National Park Lahemaa. Bogs, swamps, forests and relics of Soviet times, a lovely tour guide who explained to us about cultural and social whatabouts in Estonia as well – it was a lovely start into the new year of my life!!

The trip to the Baltics finished in late August with a three day stay on the Curonian Spit in Lithuania. Endless beaches, deep dark forests and the lovely sounds of the Baltic Sea – my heart grows wide even at the thought of it!

In September I discovered a small part of the deep West of Germany – this is a shot of Hambach castle, an important place for the German national movement in the 19th century and one of the birthplaces of our modern democracy.

My finish is my discovery of the year – Gdańsk! I fell for it long and hard. There is much more to discover about Tricity and the whole Kashubian area in the North of Poland. I am nothing but grateful for the fact that 2012 has given me a place that I could love so deeply. I hope you will follow me as I explore it further!

„Making Strange“, or Snow in Berlin

Dezember 12, 2012 / bruecken_schlag / 10 Kommentare

Another post in the seasonal department, I feel compelled to write about the beauty of snow.

There is a really good German film called Jenseits der Stille (English Beyond Silence). Now I love German film in general, but this one is especially great. It tells the story of a girl born to deaf parents who has regular hearing ability herself. She learns how to play the clarinette and her music threatens to alienate her from her family because they cannot understand it. At this point I’d just like to say: Watch it, it’s beautiful. Anyway, in one of the very intimate moments between her and her father, they stand and look at snow falling, and he asks her (signing of course): „What does snow sound like? What does it tell you?“ And she answers: „Honestly, snow doesn’t talk much. They even say snow drowns out all the noise. When snow is falling, everything is very quiet.“

Now, Berlin is never quiet. But it is quieter when it is as snowed in as it is now.

The cars go slower, their motor screams muffled in white thickness, and on the large streets they disperse the dirty greyish substance that’s left on the floor like dust. The tram tracks disappear underneath it too.

The way the snow mixes with granulate on the sidewalk reminds me of little villages in Austria where we used to go skiing, and of walking to a gondola that will take you up the mountain where the sun is crisp and the snow is sparkling.

An untouched glistening surface, so pure, so innocent, is sitting between parking cars on the sidewalk. And once it is broken in, there is a trail, showing a path, leading the way into any new adventure. Both images have their very own beauty inscribed into them. Foothigh, there is snow in my yard, laying all the tiny bushes my neighbor is nurturing with so much care, tiny red blossoms peeking out of the covers. The most bizarre plant there is the cactus reaching out high, with his sad little leaves wilting in the cold, like he was having a bad-hair-day.

Snow is covering the roof of the pretty old church in Bohemian Rixdorf in Berlin Neukölln that still carries substance from the 15^th century, although most of it has been rebuilt after several destructions in wars. It reminds me of the pretty wooden churches I have seen in Slovakia and Ukraine. This being an area that was first settled by protestant refugees from Bohemia in 1737, and with the church having been rebuilt in 1757, it figures, and the visual evidence of the Eastern influence excites me. As the church now overlooks the Rixdorf Christmas Market (one of the more traditional ones), its red roof tiles sugar coated, it looks like it was taken out of a fairy tale.

Streets, cars, yards and churches – it all looks different, it is as though the world was in its entirety a work of art in which the artist had distorted, estranged reality for the on-looker to see it anew, as though laying eyes upon it for the first time. I didn’t come up with this concept of „making strange“ or „defamiliarization„, a guy called Viktor Sklovskij did about a hundred years ago, even before the master of German 20th century theatre, Bertolt Brecht, brought the idea to his drama theory. But it is exactly how snow works. I don’t just recognize things I know, walking past them in an unaware, unconscious manner. Instead I look at them, I see them, and I allow myself to rethink them from a new perspective.

Snow makes me look at the world differently. It allows me to rediscover things I thought I knew and see them in a new light and sound – whiter. Quieter. What a gift.

Bearpit Karaoke – Mauerpark on a Sunday

Oktober 16, 2012 / bruecken_schlag / Kommentare deaktiviert

When I find myself shaken with travel fever and I am really itching to get away, but I’m stuck in the grey, weird, awesome and stressful monstrosity that is Berlin, Bearpit Karaoke at Mauerpark is a remedy that has proven to be helpful every single time for several reasons. I’ll take you on a quick stroll through a Sunday afternoon at the pit to explain to you why that is.

On any given Sunday between sometime in Spring and the last halfway decent day in Autumn, I will get to the pit and there will still be a gymnast, a magician or a stand up comedian heating up the crowd that is bound to be sitting on the steps already. As long as they are still going, I will peform the art of choosing the right place to sit (not too close to the speakers, perfect distance from the stage, preferably in the sun etc.). When around three o’clock the artist of the day will have wrapped it up, Joe Hatchiban arrives with his orange bike that magically transports everything he needs to get the show started – including speakers specifically designed for the pit’s acoustic conditions, wicked!! And the cheering begins. And I cheer, too, for Bearpit Karaoke heals my travel itch, as it is a bit like travelling in itself. And here are the reasons why:

Reason #1: It is a place completely out of space and time. If you took this little patch of land and isolated it from its surroundings, there would be no way to tell where you took it from. The language that is spoken most is English with any given accent, and the German accent is not necessarily the most common one in the crowd. I could forget that I am not abroad when I am here. There literally are people present aged 1 through 80 from any country with any background.

Reason #2: Everyone’s equal in the pit. Because the crowd – I am horrible with estimating numbers, but appearantly there are more than a thousand onlookers on a sunny day – will cheer with equal enthusiasm for someone who is really horrible and for someone who is just rockstar amazing. The people will reward what the performance manages to get across – and even someone who cannot sing can make a thousand people dance, or laugh, or just plain feel something.

Reason #3: When I am there, it is easy to believe that the world is a good place. There is an image that is among my most favorite memories ever. Joe always walks around with a tin collecting donations. The way that everyone stretches out their arms to him is getting to me every time. People are doing it not because they want to take something from him, but because they want to give something to him! There is this immense willingness to give back for all the joy that this event imposes upon everyone who is there. And it looks so beautiful when Joe is jumping up and down stairs and arms are reaching for the tin from every direction to underline the feeling of gratefulness that encircles the pit. Really I am not here to flatter, but Joe is a pretty awesome dude for making this all happen.

Reason #4: Unexpected things happen. A blind Brasilian girl is led to the stage, seeming insecure, and then she’s singing the Scorpions‘ „Rock me like a hurricane“ like an absolute pro. A plain, short, bearded man that in teh street you would easily overlook is coming into the centre and then singing a German version of Sinatra’s „My way“ with so much soul and ernest that you’re just completely taken by him (granted, he is not bearded anymore and also he does this every Sunday, but the first time it is really unexpected! And also, it doesn’t cease to be endearing). Most recently, four people are starting to sing „Gangnam Style“ and all the remains of the pit are storming the stage and starting to dance. There are marriage proposals. Declarations of Love. And just plain old good entertainment.

Reason #5: When I travel, I never have to care about tomorrow – just about the moment. When I am singing for an audience, I feel the same way. Yes, I am a sucker for the stage. I love singing, and I love the funny things that stagefright does to my tummy – especially when there is an audience that I do not know. I find it much harder to perform for people I care about, because I put a lot more pressure on myself. At the pit I go in there and I’m allowed to forget about my ambitions. I just let go and sing. And I return to my seat with adrenalin shooting through my body, and I am feeling alive. There really is no need to be afraid of a performance at the pit. Nothing to lose. Just a whole lot to gain.

As I make my way back to my bike through the park when the show is over, past all the people with their guitars, their drum sets made from cans and boxes, their artwork, their dancing, their hula hooping or whatever else they may have on display, I can’t believe that I am walking on what used to be the death strip. To my left – the former West. To my right – the former East. Today it’s multiculturalism at its best. And a whole lot of happy up for grabs.

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